r life on
board of her, that we have got a strange feeling that this voyaging will
never end; nor does the idea altogether arouse our discontent.

We have had one or two births, and, alas! one poor child has been taken
from our little company. There have, of course, been no weddings on
board, but the prevailing opinion is that several have been arranged to
take place as soon as we get on shore. And the time is very near now.

At last, late one afternoon, as the ship is bowling steadily along with
a ten-knot breeze on the port quarter, the deck is hailed from aloft,
and the cheery, long-expected, and long-wished-for cry of "land ho!" is
taken up by a hundred voices, and rings out across the sea. But there is
nothing to be seen for all that; and though more than three hundred
pairs of eyes keep anxious ward and watch, darkness falls before an
almost imperceptible cloud upon the far horizon is pronounced
oracularly by the mate to be Cape Maria Van Diemen, New Zealand's
north-western-most promontory.

One may easily imagine that it is difficult to "turn in" on a night when
such a fresh excitement fills every mind, but, I suppose, most of us do
contrive to get to sleep eventually. With the first break of dawn in the
morning there is a stir and commotion all through the ship. Rules are
forgotten, and etiquette broken through, as men, women, and children
rush hastily on deck to take their first look at our future home.

It is a beautiful summer morning. There is only a slight ripple on the
surface of the water, and not a cloud in the blue sky overhead. The
gentle breeze that just keeps us in motion blows off the land, bearing
with it a subtle perfume of trees and flowers and herbage; how
unspeakably grateful to our nostrils none can tell so well as we, who
inhale it with ardour after so many weeks at sea.

Yonder, a mile or two to starboard, and seeming within a stone's throw,
is the land we have come so far to seek. A wall of rock, the northern
cliff of New Zealand rises abrupt and imposing from the sea, broken here
and there into groups of pillared, pinnacled islets, nobly irregular in
outline, piled and scarred, indented and projected, uplifted and
magnificent. On the summit of the cliffs, on ledges and terraces, down
at the bottom of the rocks, filling every little bay, and sweeping down
the gullies and ravines, is everywhere abundant the wild foliage of the
evergreen forest. Glorifying the rich and splendid scene, div